


Start Again

by asktheravens



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor (Movies) RPF, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Death, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1305346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asktheravens/pseuds/asktheravens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times would you start over before you got it right?</p><p>Written for Tothetwelve's fanfic contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End of All Things

Just as the stories promised, Thor took his ninth step and fell, not dead but dying.What had not been foretold was that this time, Loki would be waiting to catch him.Thor weighed just slightly less than the faith of several million people, but Loki held him and lowered them both to the foul, muddy ground, churned to gory muck with the thunder god’s dark blood.The great serpent, Loki’s monstrous son, writhed his last and pitched forward next to them, and all around them the barren rock smoked with his burning venom.The same poison now ran in Thor’s veins; he had dropped his hammer along his final walk and his hands clutched his torn belly as though they could hold the life in.

“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” he asked Loki.The Trickster turned him over and lay him in his lap, so that his last sight would be the leaden winter sky and the endless falling snow.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said.“It seems there is some room for variation even here at the end of the world.Never fear, brother dear.I’m sure the Gatekeeper will be along presently to finish me off.”

“It hurts,” Thor said.He sounded surprised, betrayed even in this little thing.“They said it would be quick.”The wound sizzled and blackened as the venom worked deeper into his guts.When it reached his heart, Loki knew, he would be gone.

“You’ve the thought of Valhalla to comfort you,” Loki told him.He stroked Thor’s hair back from his brow and covered him with his cloak to block out the frigid wind.

“Valhalla is a shell, emptied to a man for this battle.There are no Valkyr to take me, and I would not go to that crumbling hall of ghosts and echoes.Not alone.”Thor caught Loki’s hand in his calloused, filthy grip, and his skin felt too thin to hold his pulse, scorching Loki’s numb fingers with its blazing, fevered heat.He tilted back his head so his blue eyes met his brother’s and pleaded with him through the agony that brightened his eyes and tensed his jaw.

“You still want to take me with you?Here in this place of dead gods, lying next to the corpse of my son with your guts torn out, you think we can mend our bond?”

“You had no choice in having him or in what he would become, just as I had no choice in killing him.We had no choice in any of this.We are bound to a wheel that someone else set to rolling before we were even born.”Thor’s body began to twist and convulse; Loki could feel his heartbeat slowing, shaking him with each irregular thud.Lightning flickered and split the sky followed by a weak rumble of thunder.A gust of wind swirled the falling snow around them and a few steps away the head of Mjolnir cracked and went dim, breaking with the quiet sound of things ending.Thor sighed and his blood spilled more quickly over the snow.The stories said that Loki would die with laughter on his lips as Ragnarok brought the Realm Eternal crashing down around him, but an icy tear dripped onto Thor’s face.He felt no satisfaction.He felt nothing at all.

“Loki?” Thor croaked.

“I’m here.The Norns have no script for this moment, it seems, and for now our actions are our own.”

“I love you still,” he sighed.His grip went slack on Loki’s hand, but Loki held on to him.

“You would, you fool,” he said fondly.

“Do you think we’ll do it over?”

“Probably.The cycle repeats; that’s our curse.”

“It’s all right.At least we’ll be together.We will have some happy times before we find ourselves back here.”Fluid filled his venom-scorched lungs and his words gurgled as he fought for air.

“Hush now, Thor.Don’t trouble yourself.” Loki stopped stroking his hair and held him.He wanted more moments that he didn’t deserve, and he knew it was selfish to ask his brother to linger here in such pain but cared not.

“It doesn’t hurt now, Loki, not anymore.We can start…again…” Thor whispered it with his last breath.His heart beat nine more times, an echo of his stumbling steps, and fell still. Loki shut Thor’s empty eyes and held him as the last of the heat left his body.He knelt alone, save for the corpses, in the hush of the Fimbrul Winter, as the snow hissed and steamed on the poisoned stones and made drifts which blurred and softened the lines of great Jormungandr’s massive shape.

When Heimdal’s long shadow at last fell across him, Loki rose to meet his death with grim satisfaction.

 


	2. Florence, Italy 1478

Christoforo woke to the scratching of his lover’s pen and a beam of warm sunlight across his eyes.He stole a moment to watch his poet at work.Tomas sat at the window, his unguarded face showing the progress of his thoughts.All he wore was Chris’ own shirt, too large on his lean frame; it gaped open unlaced at the neck and left his long, slender legs exposed.His other hand worked through his blonde curls without his conscious control, a sure sign he was deep in the throes of a lyrical battle.The golden morning sunlight suffused him with radiance, turning his hair and skin to gilt and cream.

“Aggh, Tomas, what are you doing?” he groaned and flung his arm over his eyes with pantomimed drama, as though he had just woken up.

“Writing,” he said in a mild tone.“You’d sleep until the sun set again, if I let you.”He set down his pen and smoothed his hair, then came to join Chris amid the damp, sex-scented wreckage of the bedclothes.  

“As if it weren’t you who exhausted me,” he teased.He caught Tomas’ hands as he sat on the bed and drew him into a kiss.

“I didn’t hear you complaining last night,” he kissed back and Chris took the opportunity to get his hands in Tomas’ curls.He usually covered them up and hated to look messy, but Chris went crazy for his hair.

“I heard you plenty.Did God answer your prayers?”Chris kissed down his lover’s long neck and followed the line of red and purple marks he’d left on Tomas’ collarbone, the ghostly trail of his own lips and teeth.

“Once or twice.Stop it, that stings!” he gave Chris a playful swat.“You should pray my clothes cover them, you animal.”But there was no anger in his voice; no one would challenge a Medici, not even the gentle, scholarly runt of the litter.It didn’t seem possible that even God could keep the rumors from reaching Lorenzo that his cherubic nephew was no longer the angel he so resembled, defiled at the hands of an illegitimate Borgia.

“I’d rather hear you pray some more, my love.You do it so nicely.”Chris did not stop kissing him.His hands rucked up the shirt as they roamed, baring Tomas’ slender waist and the bit of baby fat at his belly that he craved to touch.Last night they had come together like Judgement Day, desperate to make up for the time they had to spend apart, but this morning he would take his time.

“Oh no…oh stop it…” Tomas sighed, but his arms found their way around Chris and his fingers twined in the unfashionable length of his hair.“I’m already late…I’m supposed to meet my uncles at the Duomo and I’ll never…”

“Don’t go,” he paused his kisses but parted Tomas’ thighs with his knee.He bent his lips to Tomas’ ear and spoke, as low and enticing as he could.“You’ll be in Confession for hours after last night, and that’s just to cover what you said.Tell me what you were writing instead.”

“A poem…A sonnet,” he said.He straddled Christoforo and slid into his arms, hard against his bare stomach.He tilted his head back so he could have his throat kissed.

“Is it about me?” He obliged his poet, held him close and placed gentle, sucking kisses down the hollow of his neck.

“You think I could contain you in a mere fourteen lines?”

“I think you would try.”

“I would need a whole poem just to praise the feel of your lips, and another for the color of your eyes.”The skin of his thighs slid cool against Chris’ hips and his cock brushed Tomas’ buttocks with each shift.

“I think I’d like to hear that.What about this?”He slid one of his hands free of the shirt and guided Tomas’ fingers to his cock and shuddered as they gripped him.

“Hmmm…a whole book, I think, on how I feel about this,” he stroked him, teasing.“And maybe a second, an epic to cover all the things it can do.”

“Another Divine Comedy?”

“Just the _Paradiso_ ,” he murmured.“Dante had his Beatrice to move his pen, and I have you.”

“So you _were_ writing about me?”His hand ran over Tomas’ bare ass, kneaded and squeezed.

“The sunrise, actually.Your ego is grand enough.”Though he’d had some thoughts to turn the sestet to the topic of his lover, if he were honest.

“Maybe I’ll follow you when you go back to Pisa, then, if I’m your Beatrice.You’ll need your muse to keep you from turning too studious.”He kept one hand on Tomas’ waist, but his free hand moved deeper.Slow but insistent, he began to work him open with two fingers.

“Christoforo, I will be studying _theology_ , I can’t…oh, blessed Virgin that feels amazing…”

“Do you forget my father is a Cardinal, and my mother his second favorite mistress?What use is piety without passion?”He relished the sounds he earned from Tomas and the way he moved in close to accept him; unlike his father, he would never be willing to put his lover aside.

“I would…” but what Tomas would was lost, interrupted as the bells of the Duomo began to clang all together.Chris stole one more kiss, but they were both distracted, looking out the window as though they could see the disturbance.The bells rang on, the alarm to rouse the city, for an outbreak of war or plague or riot.“I have to find my uncles,” Tomas said.“They will know what is happening.”His face pinched with worry as he climbed off, and he shucked his borrowed shirt without taking his eyes off the window.There seemed no point in trying to talk over the racket, but Chris sighed to himself as Tomas began to hunt for his clothes.  

“I’ll go with you,” he said.He shrugged into his rumpled shirt and groped under the bed for his wayward pants.“The streets won’t be safe.”He found his clothes, and more importantly his sword belt.He was making better progress than Tomas, who still stood naked below the waist.He absently tucked curls under his hat, but he focused on the window with his eyes full of dread.

The clangor of bells covered the footsteps that pounded up the stairs until it was too late.Chris had just gotten his pants onto his hips when three men with drawn daggers kicked in the door with a spray of splinters.Tomas froze, his face shocked but not much surprised.

“I wouldn’t if I were you, blondie,” the smallest of the men, his pockmarked face stubbled with a salt and pepper day-old beard, snarled at Chris.Chris stopped drawing his rapier but left his hand on the hilt.Despite his state of dress, his stance was all arrogance, ready for a fight.“Our business isn’t with you.Thought you said the Medici would be alone?” He asked one of the other men, a note of petulance in his voice.

“He’s supposed to be.Lorenzo know you like it in the ass, Choir Boy?”Tomas didn’t rise to the bait, but he tried to warn Christoforo with just his eyes to stay still.The leader had a scar at his mouth, a deep line that drew his upper lip into a cruel sneer and slurred his speech.“The bastard probably gave you your first taste, eh?Who’s your boyfriend, _leccacazzi_?”

“I’ll tell you who I am, you son of an ugly whore…” Chris lunged for the leader but the third man, the largest of the three, put a dagger to his ribs.

“He’s no one,” Tomas lied.He put his nose up and tried for his Uncle Lorenzo’s easy and imperious countenance.“A paid companion.He means nothing.Let him go and we can settle this like civilized men.”

“He’s lying!Look at this ring!He’s no whore, he’s…” the little bearded man had Chris’ hand, examining the heavy ring he wore as though desperate to see something else.“He’s a fucking Borgia!”He dropped Chris like he held a snake and turned an accusing look at his leader.“Now what do we do?The Albizzi wanted it clean, they aren’t going to want a bloodfeud with another house!”The leader closed his eyes and sighed.

“Well now you’ve said that, we’re going to get it over with and hope Rodrigo doesn’t miss one bastard.They already got Giuliano in the Duomo, and Lorenzo will be dead too.The Borgia wants to be Pope, and he’ll need Albizzi money if the Medici are gone.”

“Leave him alone!Let him go, he won’t say anything.” Tomas doubted that was true, but he begged Christoforo to pretend at least.The leader didn’t answer.He plunged the dagger into Tomas’ belly instead, then again as his blood began to flow in a warm rain.Tomas sank to the ground and thought of his unfinished poems.He could hear his lover screaming his name.This wasn’t right; they completed each other.Their bodies rose and fell together like the lines of a sonnet, but now the form would be broken, never resolved.Another dagger hammered into his back and he turned his head toward Christoforo.He’d lost track of the blows, but he knew what he wanted his last sight to be.The Albizzi assassins stole even this, however; his vision had gone dark and his ears had filled with the black rushing sound of his own death.

He heard the distinctive scrape of a rapier clearing the scabbard and knew a tiny bit of hope that his love had gotten free.

“Christo..for…” he sighed, and died with a smile on his lips.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based on the assassination of Giuliano di Medici, who really was stabbed to death in the Duomo on April 26, 1478, and loosely related to MartyMC's character designs.


	3. London, England 1599

Kit waited with less and less patience for the theaters to let out.Thom’s landlady had let him in with a sour, knowing look but he didn’t care a dead rat’s ass about her withered opinion.He had the most expensive port he could lay hands on and some hope that it would sweeten Thom’s sharp tongue.The late supper he’d laid out was getting congealed but he knew Thom would be ravenous after the show, and likely for more than just food and wine.When the throngs of groundlings burst from the Globe’s door, he gave up on even pretending to work on his own play and watched the streets swell with people and dwindle to a trickle as the sun sank.Still Thom didn’t come home, but he’d be furious if Kit went over to the Globe and asked after him.Kit already feared how Thom would take the news he had to share at some point tonight and he didn’t need any mishaps.

As it happened, Thom was furious anyway.He banged up the rickety stairs and slammed the door to his suite open, a wordless screech of frustration still on his lips.He had changed to his own clothes, but he still had Beatrice’s makeup smeared on his face and the wig had matted his curly hair into an odd shape.

“What’s the matter, love?” Kit tried for levity, but Thom’s glare remained murderous.“Didn’t it go well?”

“I was _amazing_ ,” he hissed.“But it isn’t going to matter!” Thom seized the first thing to hand, a crockery washbasin from his night table, and smashed it on the floor.Kit held very still and kept his voice mild as he spoke.

“Why won’t it matter?”

“Because they are closing the bloody theaters tomorrow!No idea when we will reopen!They will forget me, Kit.”The rage burned out of him as swiftly as it had come on, and he flopped onto the bed.

“Why are they closing them this time?”Kit got up and joined Thom on the bed.When he put a hand on him, Thom did not recoil, so Kit began petting his hair back into a normal shape.

“Another outbreak of plague!”Thom swung his arms up and shook his fists at the ceiling.“Of all the rotten luck.Right when I finally get to lead!”

“It won’t be long.You are the best leading lady Burbage has, and you’ll be Beatrice again when they reopen.Better, even, for a few days rest.”

“Just watch, Kit, this will be the time they close us down for good.I’ll be forgotten entirely, and die in destitution doing mummer’s shows down in Spitalfields.”Thom raised his head and dropped it on Kit’s lap, a portrait of despair.“And I can never be the best leading lady.I’m too bloody tall.”He gestured at the thin length of his body as if it were the pinnacle of injustice.”Kit took out his handkerchief and started working on Thom’s streaked powder and rouge with a gentle hand.

“When I finish my play, you’ll be a queen,” he promised.“Lords will fear your revenge and Ladies will weep for your tragic end.”

“And you will want to bed me?”

“Everyone will want to bed you.But I think you’ll choose me.”

“Why Kit,” he drawled, “Are you implying that I earn my roles on my back like a dockside doxy?”

“More of a suggestion, really,” he grinned down at Thom.“And you know damn well how you earn them: by your brilliance.”

“Mmmm.Keep going, darling.”He cracked one eye open.“Is that food I smell?”Kit took the hint and reached over to little table by the window where he’d been waiting.He took the knife and a half wheel of cheese and began cutting pieces off.

“You imbue your heroines with such fire,” he said and popped a bite of cheese into Thom’s waiting mouth.“And they are so articulate that every man in the audience longs for a taste of your tongue.”He stole a kiss and continued in their familiar pattern.Thom adored flattery, at least from Kit, and soon he joined him at the table.He sat and drank deeply from his glass of heavy port, relaxing into the rich sound of Kit’s voice as he ate and drank.When Thom was left picking at crumbs, Kit poured out the last of the wine for him and stepped behind him.Still holding him with his voice, he unlaced Thom’s shirt and slipped it over his head.His stage makeup left a smudged line separating the powdered skin of his part from the naturally pale skin of his bare shoulders.Kit stroked his neck and kneaded into the tense muscles around his collarbone.Thom made a sound low in his throat like a cat purring and with one fluid movement rose and lay facedown on the bed.Kit took a moment to remove his own clothes and sat next to him.He took the little vial of oil from the bedside table and rubbed some over his hands.The heady scent of rose and bergamot filled the little room; the oil came from Italy and cost a small fortune, but Thom would accept nothing else.Kit enjoyed indulging him— he had, after all, given it to him in the first place.He worked it into Thom’s bare back and gave the waistband of his pants a playful tug.Thom complied with languid haste, wriggling out of the rest of his clothes so Kit could include his buttocks and thighs in his ministrations.

“How did you learn to do this?” he murmured.Kit could feel the knots loosening under the insistent stroke of his strong fingers.

“Just something I picked up at University,” he said.He worked on the ticklish spot at the small of his back, knowing how it made Thom's cock stir every time.

“Who shall I be for you tonight, love?Do you want a witty Beatrice?Or a sweet, simpering Hero?Perhaps gentle Portia moves your loins?” With each line, he changed his voice subtly, switching from role to role.

“Just be Thom for me tonight,” he said.He hoped Thom heard only the lust in his voice, and not the sorrow that made it husky.

“What is it, Kit?” he asked.He sat up and turned around to face him, and Kit knew his sharp eyes weren’t missing anything. 

“I just…I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again,” he blurted out.Thom’s face closed off like a slammed door.

“Is it _her_?” He had never in all their time together called Kit’s wife by name.

“No.Lord Walsingham wants to see me tomorrow, is all.It’s probably nothing.”

“But it might be anything?”

“Exactly.”

“Would you tell me what he wanted even if you knew?”

“No.It’s not safe for either of us for anyone to know what we do.”

“Is it still France you have to spy on?Or has he found you a Spanish target?”

“Thom…”

“Or is it someone closer to home?Are you going to be left in a reeking alley like your tragic hero Marlowe?”

“Whatever it is, it’s the last time.I swear.”

“It had better be.I can stand being your second, just barely, but I refuse to come third after _her_ and England anymore.”

“You are never second, Thom, not in my heart.I cherish every moment we’re together.”

“Is this meant to be your hero’s send off, then?And I’ll just wait here meek as a lamb for you to come back to me?You think I couldn’t have ten lovers richer and more devoted than you in a fortnight?”

“I’ll prove it!Anything you want, I’ll do it.”

“Leave her.”

“Done.”They both recoiled as if slapped, surprised at the result of the thing long unsaid at last coming to the surface.

“Really?You’ll come live in London full time?”

“I will.”

“And you’ll give up spying for Walsingham?”

“If I can, yes.”

“What about the talk?Everyone will know about us.”

“I don’t care.Plague take the lot of them.”He found he was grinning like a fool, but couldn’t stop.Thom studied his face, searched for any trace of artifice, but found only sincerity.

“Very well, then, I accept.”Thom held his hand out in mocking imitation of a bride, but Kit surprised him yet again.He removed a sapphire ring from his little finger and slid it onto Thom’s, then brought his hand up to his face and kissed it.Thomas Alyn, a butcher’s son from Stratford, had never fit in anywhere, but tonight he had at last found where he belonged: in the arms of Christopher Kittredge, Lord Strange.They fell together on the bed, and though Kit’s hands were all over him, his own were distracted.He kept feeling the ring, the weight of it greater than gold and stone, and for perhaps the first time he kissed Kit without any actor’s mask between them at all.Be Thom for me, he had asked, and so he was, as he had never been for anyone else.

 

Kit kissed him goodbye in the morning and he sat naked on the bed, idly watching the sapphire facets catch the sunlight.Two long days later, the criers announced that the theaters would reopen, but by that afternoon the top news had changed: a murdered nobleman’s body had been fished out of the Thames.Thom didn’t want to believe it, but deep down he knew as soon as he heard.No one was coming back to him.  

Rumors confirmed it for him.According to the coroner, Kit had been badly beaten but alive when he went in the water.No one expected there would be any official arrests.

Thom’s performance that night was one for the ages.He dominated the stage, though he spoke not a word that wasn’t scripted.When the final curtain call came, he did not appear with his fellows.He slipped down to the muddy bank and strode out into the current to join his lover in the river, the heavy folds of his costume dragging him down.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is loosely inspired by the still-mysterious death of Christopher Marlowe, and the speculation that he served in Lord Walsingham's espionage ring. Plus I couldn't resist having Tom know Shakespeare in a previous life.


	4. London, England 14th October 1940

The bombs began to fall about the same time the brandy ran out.Tom and Chris exchanged exasperated looks but didn’t bother trying to talk over the steady wail of the air raid siren.All the lights went out as the blackout rolled across the city, and they fumbled for their coats in the dark.

“All right, love,” he told Chris.“Let’s make like moles.”He tried to keep it light, to hide his own fear for Chris’ sake and to keep himself calm.“We’ve done it before, we can do it once more.”He gave the bundle of important papers they always took with them a jaunty tap on the table and offered Chris his hand.Chris didn’t take it right away.He grabbed his brandy glass and sucked down the last of it, grimacing at the burn.Tom took his own glass, still a quarter full, and pushed it closer to him.“Have mine, too.”

“You sure?Don’t know when we’ll get some again.”Chris hesitated, fingers barely touching the glass.

“I’m sure.”He picked up a few things and put them down.He never knew what to take.He settled on a couple of blankets and tried not to think about the photos, his mother’s china, or anything else he couldn’t reasonably take down into the Tube.He’d have Chris and their identification, and anything else he could stand to lose.

They spilled onto the foggy street with the sirens still wailing.It was only a few hours after sunset and it could be dawn before the all clear sounded.Chris didn’t speak, but his grip on Tom’s arm was like iron and his limp had become pronounced.Whatever he saw or thought, whatever demons the bombs and the fear brought back, the former soldier never shared any of it with Tom, just clung to him as though far more than his life depended on it.  

“It’s all right, darling, it’s all right, my sweet one…” Tom murmured a steady string of nonsense to keep Chris calm as he towed him the two blocks to the entrance to the Northern Line.He’d seen mothers do much the same with young children during the long nights of the Blitz.He could see the deeper darkness of the tunnel entrance just ahead when a strange sound drowned out his litany.He looked up at the overcast sky as the whistling got louder.

Chris sprang to life, then, and knocked him to the ground.He shielded Tom with his coat and his own body while a building across the street vanished in a spray of rubble and a wall of solid noise broke over them like a wave.He couldn’t even be sure when it was over because it left behind a ringing so loud in his head he couldn’t hear his own thoughts.

“…Chris?” he found himself saying.“Are we dead?”Chris curled around him and wouldn’t let go.When Tom hugged him back, he encountered a warm wet patch spreading from a rent in his coat.The taste of panic, like metal and bile, rose in his throat.

“Yeah babe.We’re alive,” Chris responded.“Let’s get with the moles.”Tom clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing, though it didn’t make rational sense.Even the Germans couldn’t hear that well.In a tangle of limbs they rose, braced against rubble and wall, and started toward safety again.He felt shaky and sort of horny, like he had when Chris agreed to his halting suggestion they get dinner some time.He wanted to pull Chris into an alley and get his clothes off, because they had come so close and not died.

“You’re bleeding,” he said instead.Chris leaned on him, almost more than he could carry, but they were still going forward.

“Dead guys don’t bleed,” he mumbled.“If you were smart you’d go ahead.There will be more.”

“Who said I was smart?I’d never leave you out here.Come on, it’s just a bit further.”Chris groaned, just a bit escaping through clenched teeth, but he struggled on.

It seemed like miles to go the last half a block down the street, and then a level of hell to get them both down the stairs.Chris wasn’t helping him very much at all, and he was heavy, his coat tacky and black with blood.Tom almost dragged him to the gate and the people he saw silhouetted against the dim lights of the station.

“Oh, thank God,” he said when he reached the constable.“Can you help us?”

“No more down here.We’re full up.You’ll have to go to the next one.”

“We’ll never make it,” he told him.He could feel Chris’ pulse beating rabbit fast.“Please.Anything will do.He’s hurt.”

“I can’t…”

“Then just take him!I can run for it but he needs a doctor, or at least a blanket.”The constable, little more than a white moon and the outline of spectacles and mustache in the poor light, peered at them.Whatever he saw, it softened him.

“All right, fine, get in, both of you.There’s some space back by the archway.But I don't think there’s any doctors down here.”

“Thank you, thank you, bless you,” Tom babbled.By the time he got past the jumble of people to the far end, Chris had stopped even trying to walk.He let him down as softly as he could and sank down to join him.He wrapped their blanket around them both and told himself it was just the light that made him look so gray, just the October fog that made his skin so clammy.

“It’s going to be fine, darling, just fine, just hold on, stay with me…” he held Chris close and rocked him, stroking his dusty hair.He sung a few bars of their favorite song, the one the band was playing when they kissed for the first time, but soon forgot the words.In the break as he tried to remember them, for it seemed critically important that he finish singing the song for Chris, he heard it, a booming rumble far above, and somehow he knew it was over.

“Tom?”

“I’m here, darling.I’m here.”He covered Chris with his body.

“Love you…” Chris sighed.

“I love you too, darling.For ever and ever, right?”

“’S right,” Chris mumbled.  

“I love you, I love you, I love you…” It was the only thing worth saying as the tunnel above them burst open and a thousand tons of concrete rained down onto the platform.When the rescuers dug them out the next day, they found their bodies still clasped together, smiling in their final embrace.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed a real even for this. The Balham Station really did collapse after a German bomb struck a weak point in the tunnels above it on that date, and it killed more than 60 people who were sleeping on the platform.


	5. Epilogue: Los Angeles, California 2010

The first time he met Chris, any lingering resentment he had about not getting the lead role vanished in an instant.He wanted to play Thor, but this man actually WAS Thor, as far as he could tell.They wouldn’t need CGI for much if the muscles playing under his soft grey sweater were real.

“This is…”

“Chris,” he said, interrupting the aide with a grin.Long blonde hair spilled into his eyes and Tom wanted to brush it back so much his hand moved a bit, involuntarily, toward his face.“Sorry,” he apologized to the aide.“I can’t stand being called Mr. Hemsworth anymore times today.”Tom got his hand back under control and played off the movement like he meant to offer to shake.

“I’m Tom,” he said.He wanted to match Chris’ easy warmth and Aussie charm, but he felt dizzy and off balance.

“Good to meet you, Tom.You’re my Loki, right?” Chris took his hand in a firm grip and the swooning vertigo feeling rushed out of him and ended with a sensation like his ears had popped.He smiled back at his costar and something _clicked_ , some essential alignment at last coalesced with their seemingly inconsequential meeting.

“That’s right.I’m looking forward to working with you…Chris.”

 

In a place beyond the realms that was both close enough to hear and infinitely far away, a dead god smiled in his sleep.A faint, fond smile quirked the Trickster’s dreaming lips.

“Let’s…start again,” he murmured, and drifted back into his slumbers.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Black Swans](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1408924) by [AaylaSecurity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AaylaSecurity/pseuds/AaylaSecurity)




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